


From a Distance

by goldenslumber



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Realities, Companionship, Destiny, F/M, Intertwined, Lord of Harmony, Not Alternate Universes, Religion, Romance?, The Seven
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-09-01 00:39:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8600281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenslumber/pseuds/goldenslumber
Summary: Alternate realities within Westeroi world. Jaime and Brienne are fated characters no matter their origin; whether they be gods themselves or born in a world unknown to violence. Focuses on the subtle emotions within their relationship/companionship.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Could be messy. Wrote it quickly. I'm glad to be back. Thank you for the welcoming messages. I am looking into old works, we will see what is continued. I may even continue this if it is well-liked. There are other religions in GOT. Let me know.

THE SEVEN

 

A young woman dressed in nothing but a white linen cloak walked barefoot along the sand just at the tide’s edge. The gray waves of salt foamed about her ankles. She walked heavily, as if exhausted, or as if she had been weakened by some serious illness, but nonetheless carried about her an air of serenity that counteracted her heaviness of gait. Held a little out from her body, her forearms were braced, palms skyward, and her hands and fingers wavered to the beat of a melody only she could hear.

            Slowly, with each step taken, her face twisted into a scowl. Her serenity weened. Even from where she was she could taste it: _the foulness._ Her blind blue eyes turned from the sand to the open sea, throwing itself violently at everything it touched; a whirl of green-gray soup.

            During the night, it was usually calm and lovely.

            She stared out across the vast openness with unseeing eyes and as time passed a fog began to condensate from the wake. It was thick enough to cut through, shrouding the horizon and the distant screeching seagulls.

            That sudden weather change – and the sound of sand shifting behind her – did not go unheeded.

            “Maid,” said a rasped, broken voice.

            The Maid did not turn. Her mouth opened as if to reply, but instead the salty breeze merely filled her mouth and lungs, tasting of damp and rotten fish and something else. Something that made her blood curdle in her veins and her throat sear. The taste and the smell and the newcomer's very presence swelled inside her chest and neck until she pushed out the breath desperately. “You've done this,” she accused, softly – _disgustedly_.

            “I have done naught.”

            “Exactly. None of us have done anything to help. We stand aside. At _your_ order.” That last accusation put an edge to her usually sweet voice. “Warrior would have me believe that there will come a time in which you will allow us to meddle, but I listen more keenly toward Crone. She is wiser than all of us.”

            “And what does she say on meddling?”

            Maid screwed her eyes shut. “That you will kill us if we dare.”

            “You think me so violent? Am I the one holding a sword, sweet Maid? Do I pass judgments with every wind of breath I make?” he demanded of her, drawing up to her side. She made to turn from him. She had always shrunk away from the ominous bleakness that rolled off the Stranger's hard-edged face, scarred and grotesque and stitched as it was, but he grabbed the Maiden by the arm and retched her close to him. “Do you think my mercy to you was wrongly done?”

            “I think everything you do is wrongly done,” she spat, fighting with all her strength, all her power, yet the hand wrapped tightly around her bicep would not budge. The fingers were thin and long enough to overlap, and she knew them to be pale, spotted here and there ebony and almond and gray. “Give me back my sight, give Warrior his sword, give Smith his hammer. The Crone cannot light any paths without her lantern. Mother and Father are in constant mourning. You know taking as it is breathing, but do you know how to give, Stranger? Or are you only waiting for us to take back what you have stolen from us? Do you wish to watch that Lord of Light take over the hearts and minds of those who once so faithfully turned to us? Shall you fall _weak and meaningless_ to this barbaric Fire God?”

            A muscle flinched in his cheek. Opal eyes – the man's one redeeming feature – shined light and creamy in his face, reflecting the pink of her fair face and the tumble of golden hair that fell around it, but when he spoke next they grew as brittle as rotten ice. “I have spared you the sight of your beloved maidens raped and plundered and beaten in this time of war. It is a mercy. You should be grateful.”

            She ripped free of his grasp. “ _And I am not!_ You think us all to be in your debt. You who bars us in corners and shadows and takes our strengths–”

            “I take your arrogance and your follies,” Stranger snarled above her. He was angry. Annoyed, that the Maiden had no wit or thought and lacked the ability to understand what he told her. “I take it away and put you in your pens to protect the foolishness that is my fellow gods. I would not, if it weren't for the fact that seven must endure or six fall with only one mistake. Warrior would have been crushed a hundred times over under the hands of other gods that play with us in this game of mortals, if not for me holding him in place. You would have been corrupted by countless – the Crone burned in the Lord of Light's eyes – Mother belittled by the Lord of Harmony!”

            “You have no Faith in the Seven.”

            To that, Stranger did not answer. He merely stood and glowered at her.

            “You are truly a stranger… an outcast to even us. We hate you, you know. Father curses you. The Crone may be wise enough to heed you, but I do not fear you. You are nothing. You are a frightened boy who turns craven when faced by other gods.”

            “Yet, I am the leader of this lot.”

            “You are the one who cages us, yes, but all know we turn to Father and Mother for leadership.”

            “To the Crone for wisdom. To the Smith for prosperity. To the Warrior for strength. To you, my sweet Maiden, for innocence and the protection of maids. To me… would you wish to hear what the mortals pray to me for?” His lips curled cruelly at the edges of his mouth. They were cracked, chapped, and too pale.

            There was no answer.

            “Ah, you don't. You fear to hear it.”

            “Leave me to my grief.” Her voice was a whisper of breath, pushed out in exasperation. With all the dignity of a blind woman, she turned from him and walked on, hoping she went the right way. “I grow weary of fighting you.”

            The fog coalesced about the two. Thick and yellow the low laying clouds blanketed the coastline, rising to almost nine thousand feet, and she could not sense anything beyond it. There was nothing she could do to see or touch the maidens she was meant to protect; but she could hear them, faintly, screaming as men heaved above them, or wailing before a hand caught against their face. Unable to help them...

            It was worse.

            The Stranger lingered where he was, a hand hovering outward, as though to touch her. He tongued his teeth. He parted his bloated and cracked lips, and his teeth shone many different colors, some of them sharp and pointed, others fang-like, some normal and round, but inlaid with silver. He was a piece of almost everything and everyone. He thought: the tenderness in him, which warred most of the time with his overwhelming bleaker half, _must_ be attributed to the women of the mortal realm, _must_ be the gifts he gained from the Mother and Maiden and the children with their fantasies and unrelenting ignorance – albeit innocence.

            He ground it into dust, all his fleeting thoughts of comfort and apologizes and coddling, and wrapped his fingers into a fist.

            “Go, then!” he called after the Maiden. “Go! Think me ignorant. Think me indifferent!” _I'm not,_ he thought bitterly. _I have done everything… everything I could do to keep them safe._

            Impending doom was all _he_ tasted on his black, slitted, molted tongue as he stood on the shore of their realm to the mortals and all others. Stranger tipped his head back and looked toward the sea, the coastal wind playing against his face and the black robes he huddled beneath. Rustling, _whispering_ , in the breeze he could hear the secret curling of the peoples' hearts. All the unanswered prayers, selfish and shallow and dark, beseeching him; hurtled up through the waves from lips moving silently in a place no one will notice the prayers, inevitably echoing in his thoughts.

            And he meant to grant every one.


	2. Lord of Harmony

LORD OF HARMONY

 

            The island was peaceful.

            Well… the _people_ were peaceful. The island – and more specifically the waters surrounding it – were not so.

            They had their king; a round dark almond of a man. He slapped his big, plump belly when he laughed – and he laughed as oft as he could, despite his sons’ glowering faces. He wore little clothes; a waistcloth of hem, dyed green and a rich, ruby red to match the flush in his ruddy cheeks. He wore no finery. No headgear.

            The tattoos crisscrossed over his chest and shoulders matched that of the eldest prince. A smoldering man; a taller, finer version of his father who laughed only with a smirk and rarely at that. He who bothered himself over the workings of the priests and priestesses of His Lord. He who speculated the works of them and His. He, who soured himself over the stings of poisonous butterflies and the enslaving pirates plaguing the peoples.

            He, who departed daily from his princely hut to search out the Cave of Sighs, merely to pester those huddled within them.

            They were humid caves, half submerged in rich blue waters and secreted away within the wildest part of the island’s tropical forest. A treacherous journey for non-natives.

As he approached the caves’ entrance the bright sunlight glinting over the reservoir’s   surface blinded him so he waded slowly into the darkness and blinked away spots.

            Once his vision cleared a figure stood before him. “Price,” said the short figure. It was robed heavily in cold hues of purple and brown so unseen about the island they hurt his eyes. “You come again.”

            “Yes,” he said. “I have more questions. I require more answers.”

            And, as always, the child – or whatever it is – said: “The answers you seek are always just before you,” and allowed Jamni to wade passed him and further into the darkness.

            After much wading, the water levels began to lower and he walked over black, black stone. Further and further he goes and slowly he began to hear the sighs. The faint breathing of the rocks. The earth. The drip, _drip_ of water from the caves’ ceiling. The air was so humid there that he felt as though each breath was as thick as cotton wads and he pushed them out desperate for another breath.

            Luminous light came from just ahead. It was purple – no blue – no silver – no opal…

            It was all of them at once; for if he looked directly at the chips of shining light coming from the walls, the ceiling, from the rock itself, it was bright white; it was only at the edge of his vision that it seemed otherwise.

            There, they knelt. Most of them; perhaps there were more beyond that point, further and deeper in the earth, but Jamni had never ventured beyond that one section of cave. He had never needed to.

            He walked about the priests and priestesses in their heavy, dark robes. He looked at the shining golden rings about their fingers and the silver bracelets rattling on their wrists. The copper clasps holding their robes shut. The blue-black ink of their tattoos barely visible on their dark skin. None wore shoes. He’d asked about that once: so that they may never lose connection with the earth.

            They never so much as looked at him, as usual. They appeared to not even know he was there, but he knew they did. They simply – apparently – were unconcerned about it. He grew agitated the longer he was ignored, so he cleared his throat.

            Eventually, a kneeling figure pulled themselves to their feet. This was not the usual figure. It was much taller than the last priest he’d spoken to. Wider, too. Big feet.

            Jamni pulled himself to his full height, but was still that breadth too short.

            “Yes?” said the being – and Jamni was struck by the woman’s voice.

            “You’re a woman, then,” he said, blinking.

            “Yes,” said she, “followers of our Lord and maker of Harmonies can be women.”

            “Yes, yes,” said Jamni, impatient with that. He knew that – in fact, priestesses were known widely to be more powerful, for who better to create Harmony than the being who can kill, who can bring death, but also bring life. “That is not why I have come.”

            “We know.”

            “Well if you know, then do tell me.”

            There was a distinctive turn of the priestess’s head, tipping her robe just enough so that Jamni glimpsed the blue, blue eyes beneath them and he was momentarily taken aback. Blue eyes were rare… a rarity gifted only by the Lord himself. A powerful priestess then…

            “You know the answers,” said she, “you have received your prediction upon birth. There is never a mistake, Kingslayer.”

             The name caused him to flinch. His face grew cold. “That is not my name.”

            “It is what the Lord knows of you – it is what he has told us of you. It is perhaps then the most important thing about you.”

            “I would never harm my father.”

            The priestess merely dipped her head and said, “That was not a question, Kingslayer.”

            “Look here, you dim, old wench,” he spat, “why don’t you explain yourself? Why doesn’t this ‘Lord’ of yours say exactly how he knows this, huh? Tell me that.”

            “My name is Brie,” she murmured, demure yet firm. “And I cannot tell you more than what has already been told.”

            Jamni rubbed his jaw in frustration and attempted to contain his anger.

            “You do not ask the right questions,” she finally said, in conclusion and made to turn away, but Jamni snatched her by the arm.

            Those who were kneeling suddenly rose at that movement. Many dark robed people rising all at once with such speed was intimidating and Jamni immediately released the wench, raising both hands, and said, “Alright, alright, keep your robes on. I’ll keep my filthy hands to myself.”

            Another tall figure, though not as tall as the woman stepped out. He motioned the others back to their places. He spoke and Jamni recognized his voice as the one he usually talked with. “Kingslayer,” he said, “you should go home. Back to your father. Your brother.”

            “I’m not leaving without answers.”

            “You say that every day, but the day for answers is not this day.”

            “When? When is the time for answers then?”

            Brie spoke softly. “Soon,” she said. “Too soon.”

            An urge to grab at the woman again and shake the damned answers out of her struck him, but he fought it. No matter how desperate the answer she did give him made him feel, he said, quite composed, “I will stay here.”

            “Then you should make harmonies with us,” said Brie.

            The priest scuffed.

            They’d never invited him to kneel with them. Jamni didn’t particularly _want_ to, but the invitation shocked him. “I do not know how,” he said, dismissively. “I do not wish to do work for a god that –”

            “The Lord of Harmony loves all, hates all, admires and despises us all equally,” she cut in, seemingly offended he meant to turn down her request. As though there was no greater honor. She walked back over to her place and sank to her knees, but left space enough for him join her… if he chose to.

            He did not.

            He did not that day, nor the next, nor the next.

            She offered, they prattled, and each day she warned him that his king-slaying days grew ever closer. He expected her to grow more and more disappointed, perhaps hateful or disgusted, by he who opposed their peoples’ peaceful ideals, but she seemed none of those. In fact, she seemed… as those she admired him. As though she pitied, yet admired him. He could make no sense of it.

            He could not be in the same room as his father for long and spent most of his days pacing the beach or the caves.

            He could not commit the murder if he did not arm himself – if he did not see the man he was supposed to kill. It was that simple.

            So he spent his days far in the forest, deep in the caves, around the most peaceful of people, looked upon by the bluest eyes that must of ever been gifted. There was no safer way.

            Yet, the priests seemed more and more displeased by his presence. They urged him insistently to return to his father, to go home, to leave them in peace.

            Except, when he asked the wench, “Do you command it?”

            She said, “I cannot stop a harmony in the works even if I desired to, Kingslayer.”

            Which confused him, but seemed to keep the others off his back, so he asked it often.

            The rain didn’t come often. So the day that it rained as though the sky had broken open, Jamni was unused to the burden of it as he traveled his way to the caves. He arrived wet and harassed.

            And something was wrong.

            He felt it the second his feet sank into the water of the caves. It was higher than usual – up to his calves. He waded harshly forward, waiting for the child. It was not there.

            He met no one on his vicious wade downward, the water growing deeper the further he went. He worried they’d been flooded out and he would not find them wherever it was they had relocated. He needed them; these peaceful people to surround him and keep him away – far, far away from his father. The sense of doom weighed down his blood.

            And then he sighed once he saw that the water, as it did, drained away, and he eventually found the stone. He picked up pace, anxious to see the bright white light at the end of the tunnel.

            It was there. So were the priests. In fact, there was perhaps double or triple amount there usually was. He looked about them, looking to see if he could pick the wench out of them all, but he could not when they were all on their knees.

            One figure rose. It was not her. He was sure. “Kingslayer,” said the stranger male, deep. “You must leave.”

            “You cannot command me to leave,” Jamni snapped, affronted that he’d phrased it like that. They’d never done so. “Where is the wench?”

            “Brie,” corrected the wench, rising. She made as if to move closer, but the other figure barred her way. She lowered her head.

            Jamni could not be sure, but he thought her blue eyes had gleamed urgently at him before she’d done so. He looked between the two. “Who are you?” he demanded of the man.

            “Leave.”

            “I will not until I know what goes on here.”

            “Preparation,” said the man, clipped. “Leave us. Now.”

            Jamni refused to move. Something was wrong, he knew it. Was it this man? Was he among them or were they hostages? Had they somehow made it to the caves under the cover of the rains? How had they managed that?

            “Show me your face,” Jamni demanded. “Show me your marks of devotion and your rings – your necklaces of emerald.”

            “Your concern and suspicions should not be directed at me, Kingslayer,” said the man, carefully. “It is a mortifying thing to accuse me of what you may have.” Even so, the man pushed the robe back from his face.

            Jamni took in the tattoos curled along the edges of his cheeks, the purple gems dangling about his head strung together by the thinnest of chain, the curly black locks shining in the harsh light of the cave crystals.

            And yet, he still felt something was wrong… some deep foreboding urging and urging him. But where? For what?

            “Minno,” said the man, replacing his robe, “escort the Kingslayer out.”

            Minno, a small and child-like figure, moved forward. Jamni followed him only because he could feel the disapproval in the room suffocating him slowly. He was halfway down the tunnel, just out of the light, when a whirl of running steps came up behind them. The child drew back against the wall, as though afraid, and the figure that came barreling toward them was tall – too tall.

            Jamni met them on a step. The wench stopped short, stumbled; the hood became completely dislodged, but it was hard to see her in the dark. Pale, pale hair; thin and whispery fell around a face kissed by the sun so many times it stunned Jaime. She was doubly blessed. Her hands gripped him by the shoulders and the grip was stronger than he would have expected.

            “Run,” the wench said, her voice breathless but compelling, powerful. “Run to your father, Jamni.” The name shocked him – she’d never used his real name and that was perhaps why he listened. He turned from her and took off, despite his fear, despite his desperation to escape destiny.

            The rain was coming down harder. Thunder echoed against the forest’s treetops. Every step was slippery and treacherous. Yet, he tore forward as quickly as he could. Twice he fell. He broke open his knee and bleed down his leg, but continued running, leaving bloody footprints along the sand once he broke the line of the forest.

            White fingers of lightning traveled frantically across the gray-purple horizon. There was screaming. He followed the sound toward the town, toward the huts. There was keening; howling. The people were gathered about the hut of the king.

            His father was dead.

            The sight of his father’s corpse laid out before the front door, clutched by his mother, mourned by the people, caused him so much shock he froze where he was.

            _No, no, no_ , he thought. _This cannot be right._

            “Brother!” Jamni snapped his head around. His brother stood nearby. No. He stood… all wrong. His brother stood lazily, lax in hip and torso, grinning madly. “Brother,” he said, “I am glad to see you.”

            The blood ran over his brother’s chest with rain water. Ran down the blade of his bloody knife and down his forearms as though a stain that would never actually wash away, but only spread.

            Jamni said nothing.

            His brother stepped around their father. The mother shrank away, sobbing. The people cringed and bowed away from his approaching brother. They parted as to make way.

            “You remember, don’t you?” his brother said. “It’s funny, really. The prophecies. I figured them out. Before you did!” He threw back his head and laughed, nearly offsetting the makeshift headwear he’d placed there: a crown of flowers. “They told me I’d never be king… never… and they told you you’d be the Kingslayer…”

            “Ceric…” Jamni began.

            “Don’t,” Ceric snapped, his eyes sharp. “Don’t you dare. This is my victory. The son who killed the king was to be...” he said, as though he’d figured out the key to the world. “I was the one strong enough – _brave_ enough to do it.”

            Jamni shook his head, bewildered. “What have you done?” he said.

            “I’ve taken the matter into my own hands. I will be king. I will save our people from slavery; not that great buffoon of a man you called father.” He pointed the knife at him. “And not you – you who could not even step up into your destiny, but spent your days running away from it.”

            Jamni lunged then, grabbing his brother by the wrists and twisting the knife from his fingers. It fell at their feet and Jamni thrust his brother back. Ceric stumbled back, but did not fall. His face twisted in rage, blotchy red and so unlike their father’s.

            “You can’t stop me… you won’t stop me, Jamni,” he snarled.

            “I will. Someone must. You’ve gone mad. Have you been stung?”

            Jamni stepped purposefully closer, putting the knife behind him and tried to corral his brother toward a hut. Ceric would have none of it. He made a swipe at Jamni; no real punch, more like a reach of claw. His nails bit across Jamni cheek. When he drew back to touch his face, Ceric kicked him in his bad knee, sending him to the ground, and made for the knife. Jamni grabbed him by the ankle and easily pulled him down.

            Ceric struggled like a child. Jamni pinned him, but he was wild beneath him and every kick, every slap, every elbow landed hard and sure. _Release me,_ he cried, _release me, I am your king now. Release me!_

“I am the eldest son,” Jamni snapped at him, shaking sense into him. “I am the king, now, and I cannot let your treason be unpunished. I must banish you –”

            Ceric punched him hard in the face. Jamni was stunned and he shimmied free. Standing, Ceric kicked him in the ribs, the chest, the face. “What’s to stop me from killing you?” his brother said. “Who’s going to stop me – banish me, huh? The people?” He threw a hand at the people who cowered nearby, who were peaceful, who wanted no part of family strife.

            Who would not fight a tyrant.

            Who would become the abused thralls of their own king.

            Who may very well be better off sold on an auction block to kinder masters.

            Jamni clutched at his broken nose, tasting the blood. He lay on his back, blinking at the raindrops. The sand was sticky and itchy against his skin. He waited there, staring up into the mad storm.

            Ceric straddled him, knife in fist.

            How had he been so ignorant to his brother’s madness?

            Perhaps he should have listened all those times the priests had told him to return to his family…

            Ceric made as though to slit Jamni throat, so sure of himself that he did expect it when Jamni reached up. He wrapped one hand around the knife hand’s wrist, holding it aloft, and the other hand clutched his brother’s throat.

            Ceric struggled. Uselessly. Jamni wrapped his legs around Ceric’s torso and gripped him so tightly by the throat that Ceric’s eyes rolled back behind his head. He watched. He couldn’t look away… couldn’t see anything more than his brother’s eyes flickering white to brown, white to brown, until finally, purple-faced and limp, he fell across Jamni’s chest.

__

            He entered the caves with his head held lower and the knife held tightly in his hands, wrapped in a swathe of fabric. There was still blood dripping from his nose and his knee, trailing behind him in the flood’s water and from the knife’s blade.

            That was how the priests received his offering. One of them took the knife carefully from his hands and fled deeper into the caves. Off to wherever it was that they took the weapons and melted them down, made them into things – beautiful things, not harmful things.

            No one spoke to him, as usual. There was still more than usual, but there was less tension; they seemed relieved, like the sighs shifting through the caves.

            Jamni spotted the kneeling figure that he instantly recognized. He lumbered that way. There was still that space; left just for him. He fell down there beside her, head bowed.

            Her face tipped his way. “Kingslayer,” she greeted him.

            “Wench,” he spat, then actually spat out some blood. He wiped at his face.

            “You’ve completed your harmony?” she asked. “You’ve made it all right again?”

            “You know the answer,” he said, clipped. Then glanced over. He caught the edge of a frown and pale eyelashes. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

            The smirk took a moment for her to register.

            “What are the right ones?” she finally responded.

            Jamni mock imitated the other bowed priests. Eyes closed. He could see the lightning reflected in his dead brother’s eyes. Could see the reflection of her blue, blue eyes in the sea where they left him to sink. Could see deep down in their watery depths among the unheard chaos of shipwrecks and the lonely songs of whales.

            “You tell me.”


End file.
